Monday, 28 December 2009

Mass Tangents In Transit

Caution the wild tangents contained in these tales were created at high speeds. To the untrained reader it might be an uneasy ride.

I have a worrying infection. The symptons have become very real in the last 24 hours. Please read my diagnosis.

Yesterday we took five hours to pick up our rental car from the Pisa airport. This usually would have only taken 1.5 hours. Our usual highway route was closed and blocked off by a police car. Our first thought was possibly an accident or roadworks. We headed back towards the Autostrade and the thoght of parting with some money for tolls.

The Autostrade was also closed. At this point we thought it could have been roadworks. Italians would have no problem closing both possible routes to Pisa on a public holiday. I actually thought this would be pretty normal for Italy.

GAZOOOKS. The weird and downright frustrating craziness of Italy has become almost comfortable.

It turns out that there was in fact a flood which had taken out both roads. The detour took us all the way to Lucca and down to Pisa and back again.

We did pick up a fantastic rental car. It is the best rental car we have ever had. It is not Japanese, Korean, Italian or French.

It is German and blue.

Why did we need a rental car?

Well we are driving to Prague to watch Avatar(Prague has a thriving ex pat community that supports full English movie theatres. Something that is not lost on me as I sit in a German hotel listening to documentaries about gumboot factories and a German cooking show).

From what I have read Avatar is a movie where a human lives in an alien world and then becomes quite fond of it and falls in love with a blue thing. Hold this thought.

This morning we started our drive to Prague. We had GPS, 12 gigabytes of music and the zeal which a well deserved holiday provides. For the McConnell Lemans, myself and my codriver would take 2 hour shifts. The co pilot would be in charge of photography, audio, GPS programming and autogrill spotting.

The nine hour drive to our current location in Germany was an adventure on four wheels. Things progressed to plan until my old enemy snow started to show his face. Wearing a cunning disguise I found myself taking photos of him unwittingly and perhaps unwisely.

Thankfully my camera ran out of battery before I damaged my retinas.

Remember Avatar. A shocking revalation awaited me when we visited a petrol station in Austria.

I went into the Petrol station expecting Italian. I found myself thinking in Italian. Promptly got very confused hearing German. Walked outside to the car in a stupor.

THE ALIENESS THAT IS ITALY IS MY HOME!

Thankfully the breakneck craziness that is the Autobahn took my mind off my illness. The Autobahn is insane. I actually thought it was everybody get in a car and drive as fast as you can national holiday. It wasn't, it was just the AUTOBAHOMENESS.

Another interesting observation was the huge city of Ausfahrt. Appart from the incidental hilarity of the name, we actually thought there were 10 different exits to this megacity. Sadly after twenty exits we deduced that Ausfahrt means exit. Doh.

We made it to our current location Regensburg safely. We found a long lost love. Thai food. We have not eaten Thai since we left New Zealand. The Thai was incredibly good.

Tommorow we will peek around Regensburg a bit before we take the 2 hour drive to Prague.